1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for connecting wireless devices, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for easily and effectively connecting wireless devices or portable terminals which can perform wireless communications.
2. Description of the Related Art
With rapid development of information communication technologies, various portable, compact wireless devices have been developed. Representative examples of such wireless devices are portable terminals, such as cellular phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and Portable Multimedia Players (PMPs), which can receive or transmit information from/to other terminals. In particular, most such wireless devices have been designed to execute various other applications as well as their intended functions in order to satisfy consumers' various requirements. With this trend, a need for connecting wireless devices to each other is increasing.
For example, many cellular phones provide a MP3 player function of playing music. In this case, users can listen to music through a speaker installed in a cellular phone, or through an earphone as necessary. In the case of listening to music through an earphone, the cellular phone should be connected to the earphone.
Conventionally, in view of stability of information transmission, a wired earphone which is put into the cellular phone has been utilized. However, with development of communication technologies, stable transmission of information has become possible without utilizing any physical medium for transferring signals, and a technology of wirelessly connecting an earphone to a cellular phone has been developed. A representative example of wirelessly connecting an earphone to a cellular phone is to utilize a bluetooth earphone and a bluetooth cellular phone.
Wireless connections between devices provide convenience to users, however, there is inconvenience in that extra setting is required to satisfy the characteristics of wireless communications. That is, a wireless communication channel for wireless connections should be established between devices that are to be connected to each other, and a communication protocol, which defines the size of a data packet, a communication method, etc., should be set.
In the case of using the Bluetooth cellular phone and the Bluetooth earphone, users have to manipulate the cellular phone in order to connect the earphone to the cellular phone. In other words, in order to execute a Bluetooth mode, a user manipulates a cellular phone to search for a peripheral Bluetooth device and display the result of the searching, and then, selects and registers an earphone to which he or she wants to connect the cellular phone, while viewing the displayed result.
However, the conventional method is available only when users are aware of the intrinsic information of wireless devices. Also, the conventional method has inconvenience in that users have to input various information required for wireless communications through manipulation of a cellular phone. Particularly, when a user tries to replace an earphone with a different one, he or she should repeat the process described above, which requires a long time and causes inconvenience.